


Oh By Gosh By Golly

by eternaleponine



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas Party, Clexmas (The 100), Clexmas 2020, Clexmas20, Day 2, F/F, Mistletoe, Mistletoe & Holly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:40:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28285617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: Every year, Lexa's Uncle Gustus and Aunt Indra hold a party on Christmas Eve, and it'stheplace to be.  While the adults get jolly upstairs, the high schoolers head down to the basement for their own fun.  When Finn arrives wearing a mistletoe headband and sets his sites on Clarke, Lexa knows she has to intervene.For Clexmas 2020 - Day 2: Mistletoe & Holly
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 40
Kudos: 344





	Oh By Gosh By Golly

The Woods' Christmas Eve party was _the_ event of the holiday season. Anyone who was anyone attended, acting as if it gave them some kind of superior social status to be there... never mind the fact that pretty much the entire town was invited, because Gustus and Indra Woods weren't elitists.

Not like her father.

Lexa had often wondered how it was possible for two people to grow up in the same house, with the same parents, and most of the same DNA, and end up so different. But unless they knew, no one would ever think that Titus and Gustus Woods were related, much less brothers. 

She'd also wondered, back when she was young and dumb and still believed in fairness, what she'd done to make God or the universe or whatever power was in charge of things hate her so much that they'd given her Titus Woods for a father, and no mother to balance him out... at least not that she remembered. 

Because it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that her cousins Lincoln and Anya had – objectively speaking – the best parents in the world, who threw awesome parties and who everyone loved, and she had Titus fucking Woods, who could give Ebenezer Scrooge a run for his money when it came to Christmas spirit. 

Years ago – so long it felt like another lifetime – Lexa and her cousins had gigglingly plotted to stage a Christmas Eve haunting of her father, but before they could work out the logistics he had found their plans and diagrams and had torn them to pieces – literally and figuratively. Not in front of her aunt and uncle, though, or even her cousins. No, he just smiled at them, laughed it off like it was a joke – and it _had_ been a joke, mostly – and then when they got home he sat her down and told her all the ways she was wrong. 

In the morning when she'd raced downstairs to open her gifts, all of the presents that had been under the tree were gone. When she'd looked at her father for an explanation – had they been robbed? – he'd smiled and told her that he understood what she'd been trying to teach him – that giving was better than receiving, especially when you were giving to those less fortunate – so surely she wouldn't mind that he'd donated her gifts to kids who didn't have all the things she did.

She'd sucked back her tears and told him of course she understood, thank you, that was very generous, and she wished she'd thought of it herself.

By the next Christmas, she knew better than to ask for or expect anything. The only gifts she'd received were from her aunt and uncle and cousins, which she was grudgingly allowed to keep because they might ask questions if they came over and didn't see them. 

Not long after, they'd moved away, and Lexa had only gotten to see the rest of her family a few times a year, usually during the summer. She knew that they invited her father to visit – they could even stay at their house, they didn't need to get a hotel – every Christmas, but more often than not he found some excuse for why it just wasn't possible. One year Lexa had asked if maybe she could go by herself if he didn't want to go. She'd barely managing to stammer out the question before she cracked beneath his icy glare that was all the answer she needed. The only scrap of dignity she'd managed to cling to was that she hadn't cried, or worse, apologized for daring to ask in the first place.

This past summer, though, they'd moved back. Lexa had learned a few things over the years, so her campaign to go to public school with her cousins had been far more subtle. Unfortunately, despite her machinations, and her aunt and uncle's repeated assurances that it really was a great school, he'd enrolled her in the private school two towns over. Which meant as she stood with her back to the (fully finished and decorated within an inch of its life) basement wall, she was staring at a sea of people she didn't know, but who all knew each other, and she almost wished she hadn't come at all. 

But she refused to be like her father, who had once again concocted some bullshit reason why he couldn't be in attendance. So here she was, and here she would remain until everyone else had left and one of her relatives could give her a ride home. 

She'd been to enough of Lincoln's football games to recognize some of the faces, and she even knew some of the names that went with them, but she didn't _know_ them, had never met them or even been introduced in passing, and she wasn't the kind of person who just marched into the middle of a conversation, held out her hand and said, "Hi, I'm Lexa, want to be friends?"

After a while, she started to narrate the scene like the voiceover in a nature documentary, just to make her continued solitary state feel a little less, well, lonely. 

_Here we have the protective older sibling, circling his younger sister as she makes her first forays into the world of romance. Watch as he prowls and growls..._ Lexa snickered to herself at the unintentional rhyme. She still wasn't sure how she felt about Lincoln, who was a senior, dating a freshman. From the scowl permanently twisting his girlfriend's brother's face, neither was he. But it was obvious to anyone with eyes when Lincoln and Octavia looked at each other that they were head-over-heels, so Lexa chose to reserve judgment. 

What Octavia's brother was even doing down here, other than acting as a self-appointed chaperone, Lexa had no idea. He was too old to be hanging out with the high school kids. But to each their own, she guessed. 

She turned her attention to another section of the room, and the unfolding drama of her documentary as it played out. 

_And here we have your friendly neighborhood stoners. You can identify them by the way they look around shiftily and giggle to themselves, sure that no one suspects they are high as kites. Note how their range only extends a few yards in any direction around the refreshment table._

"Something funny?" Anya asked, nudging her with her elbow as she leaned against the wall beside her. 

Lexa glanced over and saw her cousin had filled a plate with all of Lexa's favorite cookies. She accepted it with a smile. "Just watching," she said. 

"I should have made you get your own cookies," Anya said. "Forced you to mingle. But I was afraid you would just stand there and starve if left to your own devices." 

"I wouldn't _starve_ ," Lexa said. "I'm not even that hungry." 

Anya raised an eyebrow like she knew it for the lie it was, but was too polite – for once –to call her on it. "Anything – or should I say any _one_ \- catch your eye?" she asked, her eyebrows now dancing up and down like she could see straight into Lexa's head and knew the answer even before asking.

Lexa nearly choked on the cookie she'd just put in her mouth, powdered sugar puffing from her lips as she coughed to dislodge it. She clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from making more of a fool of herself, slowly chewing and swallowing. Anya handed her a cup of punch, and Lexa chugged it down. "No," she said finally. 

Anya smirked. "Anyone ever tell you you're a terrible liar?" she asked. Then someone called her name and she pushed away from the wall. Lexa opened her mouth to say 'see you later' or 'have fun storming the castle' or something equally lame, but before she could Anya leaned down and whispered in her ear, "Her name is Clarke." And then slipped through the crowd of teenage bodies to find whoever had summoned her. 

_Clarke._

Of course it was. Because a girl like that couldn't have an ordinary name. A girl like that...

_Is so far out of your league, you couldn't even get tickets to the game,_ Lexa told herself. _Not to mention, probably straight._ Statistically speaking, anyway. Although more recent studies showed that there were allegedly as many or more kids their age that identified as not-straight in some way, shape, or form... but given her dating history (or almost complete lack thereof) Lexa had a hard time believing it. 

Now that she had a name, Lexa found it even harder to look away from the girl - _Clarke_ \- and her red dress that hugged her curves in all the right places, and the bright blonde hair that curled gently around her shoulders, and the blue of her eyes and—

_Shit._ Lexa looked down, hoping Clarke hadn't caught her staring when she happened to glance her way. She edged herself closer to the Christmas tree set up in the corner... then realized how ridiculous she was being and tried to just look casual.

As if she had a casual bone in her body.

When she dared to sneak a glance in Clarke's direction, she was relieved to find she wasn't paying any attention to Lexa's corner of the room. She was way too focused on a boy who had just entered the room, wearing a Santa hat and some kind of ridiculous headband from which something Lexa couldn't identify – some kind of plant? only it appeared to be plastic – dangled. 

A few people greeted him, laughing and grinning and slapping him on the back. Clarke, on the other hand, looked less amused, especially as he got closer and reached up to snag the lure that dangled in front of him, pinching the string between his fingers and wiggling it – along with his eyebrows – in her direction. 

Clarke smiled back, but there was something about the expression that rang false and set off alarm bells in Lexa's head. And when another girl sidled up to the boy and planted a kiss on his cheek, earning her a wide smile and a quick peck, it all clicked.

Mistletoe. The thing dangling in front of his face was mistletoe, and the goal was to get anyone who crossed his path to kiss him. And he had set his sights on Clarke.

_Here we have the Generic Suburban Douchebag,_ Lexa thought. _He thinks he's God's Gift to Women, and will stop at nothing to get what he wants._ Her lip curled into something a little closer to a snarl than a sneer. _Not on my watch, Fuckboy._

She pushed away from the wall and waded in.

There were too many people in too small a space (even though the basement was bigger than a basement had any right to be) and Lexa found herself muttering 'excuse me' constantly as she tried to get to Mr. Mistletoe before he managed to corner Clarke. 

Lexa finally broke through at the same time Douchebag McFuckboy did, and she threw herself forward, just barely managing to wedge herself between him and Clarke. 

"Excu—" he started to say, but was cut off when she 'accidentally' jammed her elbow into his midsection as she turned toward Clarke. 

"Hey!" she said, pasting on a wide smile, and then faltered when Clarke turned to look at her, all furrowed brows and confusion. 

Before Clarke could say anything, like, oh, 'Who the fuck are you and why are you so far into my personal bubble a deep breath on either of our parts would have us touching?' someone whistled, and people started to point. 

Clarke looked up, where the mistletoe still dangled over them, because even though Lexa's jab to his solar plexus had doubled the Festive Fool over, it hadn't made him back off. Under other circumstances, Lexa might have had to grudgingly give him credit for his persistence, but not now. Not tonight. Clarke's eyes flicked back down to Lexa, and her cheeks flushed slightly. "Ignore them," she said. "They're assholes."

"Uh-uh," someone said. "Rules are rules! You're under the mistletoe, you have to kiss!" 

Lexa rolled her eyes and leaned in to peck Clarke's cheek, hoping that would shut everyone up, but it only earned them a chorus of boos. She tensed, wondering where her cousins were. It was their responsibility to keep order down here while their parents kept the adults from getting unruly upstairs. Because she was about to come to blows if anyone tried to demand more than what either of them were willing to give.

She looked down when she felt a hand on hers, uncurling her fingers from a fist. Clarke flashed a crooked smile. "It's okay," she said softly. "Rules _are_ rules." And then the hand that wasn't lacing with Lexa's was on her cheek, drawing her in to a barely there brushing of their lips that Lexa felt in every nerve in her body.

The kiss was greeted by whistles and cheers, a disgusted sound (at least Lexa _hoped_ it was disgusted) from the Mistletoe Man, and finally a little breathing room as people moved on to finding other ways to drive each other crazy. 

"Do you want to get out of here?" Lexa asked, her ears reddening when she realized how that probably sounded. "I mean... just to get some air?"

Clarke looked at her – really looked at her, in a way that made Lexa feel uncomfortably _seen_ \- and nodded. "The coats are—"

"I know where the coats are," Lexa said. She realized Clarke had never let go of her hand only when she used it as a tether to keep them from losing each other as they moved through the clusters of people talking and laughing and bopping to the piped-in Christmas music that Lexa has surprised no one had hacked into yet to change. 

It took a few minutes for Clarke to find her coat, because what had started out orderly had turned into a giant heap of outergarments. They wrapped themselves up, and Lexa took Clarke's hand again, leading her into a little storage room.

Clarke balked. "I don't think we're allowed in here," she said.

"You're not," Lexa said. "I am. Privileges of being family." She breathed a sigh of relief as she opened the door that led outside to a quiet part of the yard where no one really went in winter.

"That's right," Clarke said. "You're Lincoln and Anya's cousin. I didn't recognize you." 

"We've never met," Lexa said. "I'm Lexa, by the way."

"Clarke." She squeezed Lexa's hand. "And no, we haven't, but Lincoln talks about you all the time." 

Lexa blinked. "He does?" Why the hell would he do that?

"Well, I asked," Clarke admitted. "I saw you at games a few times, and I was curious, since I'd never seen you at school. He said you go to Polis Academy, but he doesn't hold it against you." She smiled, and Lexa's stomach fluttered.

"Guilty as charged," she said. "Not my choice, though."

"I won't hold it against you, either," Clarke said. She glanced at Lexa, then away, fidgeting with the tassels on her scarf. 

"Who was that guy, anyway?" Lexa asked after a moment. "With the—"

"Finn," Clarke said. "Thinks he's a lady's man. Wishes—" She stopped, shook her head. 

"Wishes what?" Lexa asked. 

Clarke shook her head again, and Lexa let it go. "The worst part is that most of the time, he gets exactly what he wants," she said. "I guess he's cute enough... I made the mistake of flirting with him once... but... I don't know. Girls throw themselves at him so it just feeds his ego. Octavia was all about him before she met your cousin. Raven dated him for _years_ before she met... your other cousin. Huh." 

_Huh indeed,_ Lexa thought, fighting a smile. That explained Anya's unusually good mood, at least. 

"Must be a Woods thing," Clarke said. 

Lexa wrinkled her nose. "I think it might be from their mom's side," she said. "I'm a Woods, too, after all."

Clarke's jaw dropped and for a second she just stared at Lexa. More than a second. Long enough for Lexa to start to squirm, trying to figure out what she'd said wrong. After what felt like an eternity of Lexa's heart beating so loudly she was sure Clarke could see, hear, and feel it, Clarke snorted and shook her head. "You really have no idea, do you?"

Lexa opened her mouth, then closed it because she didn't know how to answer that, or if it was rhetorical and she would only make herself look worse by trying. 

"Do you honestly think I kissed you just to shut those fools up?" Clarke asked. 

"... Yes?"

Clarke laughed, the sound sharp in the cold, clear night air, and then she extricated her hand from Lexa's and pressed it to her cheek. "You're cute when you're clueless," she said, and kissed her again. 

This time it wasn't just barely. This time it wasn't over as soon as it began. This time their mouths met fully, and Lexa had to make a choice. She could do what was right – probably – and pull away, because they didn't even know each other and no matter what Clarke said, it didn't seem possible that it could be anything other than a silly Christmas tradition gone rogue. Or she could do what _felt_ right, what made her breath catch and her heart skip a beat, and kiss her back.

And damn it, it was Christmas, and this might be the only gift she got. 

They kissed until they were dizzy with it, then nuzzled into scarves and hats and hoods until they caught their breath and kissed some more. When they heard other voices, people leaving the party or just coming out to grab some air, Lexa led Clarke deeper into the garden, to a little gazebo that glowed with a fringe of Christmas lights, and then past it to an area sheltered by a few slightly overgrown bushes.

"Look what it is," Clarke said, fingering one of the shiny, prickly leaves, her smile suggestive. 

"Holly?" Lexa asked.

"Whatever, it's Christmasy," Clarke said, and put her hands on Lexa's hips, drawing her close and closer. Lexa draped her arms around Clarke's shoulders and they swayed to music they could barely hear as their lips met and parted and met again, until they were forced to admit that their shivers weren't only from the thrill of being close to each other. 

"We should probably go inside," Lexa admitted. "People might start to think—"

"We're doing exactly what we're doing?" Clarke asked. "Let them." She kissed Lexa again, soft and sweet, and Lexa felt a pang because it felt almost like a goodbye. 

Which was probably exactly what it was, she was forced to admit. There was no way—

"Do you have any plans tomorrow?" Clarke asked, holding tight to Lexa's pockets even as she started to step back. 

"It's Christmas...?"

"I know that," Clarke said, rolling her eyes. "I just..." She stopped, shook her head. "Never mind." She let go, and this time it was Lexa who grabbed on, catching Clarke's hands before she could reconsider what she'd been saying, or about to say, more than she already had, desperate to salvage the moment.

"I'll probably end up spending the night here," Lexa admitted. "Go home sometime tomorrow morning." To a house with no Christmas tree, and no presents under it. Not that that's all the holiday was about, but they weren't actually religious so it kind of... was? It didn't even have to be anything big. A tiny token acknowledging that she was someone who meant something to her father...

But she wasn't. She didn't. 

It was so fucked up, and Lexa was sick of it. "No," she said. "I don't have any plans."

"You should come to my place," Clarke said. "Even after all this," she gestured toward the house and the party that was still in full swing despite the increasingly late hour, "we're an up-at-dawn, cookies and cinnamon rolls and coffee for breakfast, presents opened by mid-morning, exhausted by noon kind of family. Afternoons are usually a junk food and Christmas movie marathon that we pretend we're not sleeping through." She smiled. "You're welcome to join us if you want."

"Are you sure?" Lexa asked. "I wouldn't want to impose."

"I'm sure," Clarke said. "Just be prepared to weigh in on the Great 'Is Die Hard A Christmas Movie?' Debate. Because you _will_ be asked."

Lexa pressed her lips together, trying to keep a straight face. "He spends the night wandering around a tower trying to avoid Alan Rickman," she said. "Clearly it's a Harry Potter movie."

A laugh burst from Clarke's mouth, and she pulled Lexa in for another quick kiss. "Oh, my dad is going to _love_ you," she said. "Please come. I promise you won't be imposing."

Lexa looked into Clarke's eyes, which managed to be both serious and bright with joy at the same time, and she knew there was only one right answer: "Okay," she said. "I'll be there."

Clarke threw her arms around Lexa and hugged her tight, and they finally extricated themselves from the holly and went back inside, trying to make their re-entry as unobtrusive as possible... which was complicated by the fact that neither of them were inclined to let go of the other's hand. 

Slowly, people began to trickle out, heading to midnight mass or bed or wherever their own holiday traditions took them. Clarke was one of the last to go, dragging her feet even as the calls down to the stairs for her to come up became increasingly insistent. 

"I'll see you tomorrow," Lexa promised. 

"I know," Clarke said. "I just..." She took Lexa's phone and programmed in her number, and then her address so Lexa would know where to find her, but still she lingered, dragging out the moment.

Anya sidled over, wearing the headband she had somehow – and Lexa wasn't going to ask how, but she hoped it involved a few bruises – taken from Finn. She took it off her head and held it at arm's length, dangling it over them. "I won't look," she said. "I promise."

Lexa laughed and tucked back a strand of Clarke's hair behind her ear. She kissed her lightly, then wrapped her in a hug. Her lips brushed Clarke's ear, making her shiver, as she whispered, "Merry Christmas, Clarke." 

Clarke pulled back, resting her forehead against Lexa's so their noses brushed, and her eyes were so blue at this close range it was almost more than Lexa could take. "It definitely will be," she said. She gave her one last, quick kiss, before going up the stairs singing, " _Only one more sleep 'til Christmas..._ "

Lexa couldn't help thinking that it didn't seem likely either of them would get much sleep at all, and they really would sleep through the movies tomorrow. 

It didn't matter. She couldn't wait.


End file.
